


fearfully and wonderfully made

by mythpoetry



Series: song of the ghost [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Credence Barebone Lives, Fae & Fairies, Internalized Homophobia, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Original Percival Graves is Bad at Feelings, Post-Canon, Religious Conflict, extended metaphors in the form of sweets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:19:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythpoetry/pseuds/mythpoetry
Summary: They meet in dark and crooked places, until Credence thinks he is a dark and crooked place himself.





	

“You are a miracle,” he tells Credence, and he means it.

 

*

 

In the diner’s harsh light Mr. Graves looks haunted. Perhaps he is tired. Credence knows little about him and his day to day life, only that he is a creature of magic, a _wizard_. There are such things in the world. Ma, in her own roundabout way, is absolutely right. They both drink their coffee, Credence taking only small sips.

“Are you hungry?” Mr. Graves asks him. He peers at his menu. “It might do you well to get dessert this time.”

Credence can’t bear the thought. He has tasted sugar twice in his life and the last was mingled in his memory with blood, when Ma found him stealing food. _That isn’t yours,_ she had told him, striking him on the mouth with his belt. _You are not allowed such things, you wicked, ungrateful child._

“I’m not hungry,” Credence lies.

“I insist,” Mr. Graves says, and orders for him when the waitress walks by. Chicken, potatoes, carrots and peas. More food than he’s ever seen at once. The thought of it makes Credence want to run away from this place, get down on his knees in the church and beg forgiveness, for his pride and gluttony. Instead he sits and stuffs his hands under his thighs, almost excited.

“Is there anything you can tell me?” Mr. Graves asks him. “Anything new at all? The smallest detail could be of use.”

Their food is brought to them. Their meals are the same. Something _twists_ in Credence’s gut, looking; it is, in a way, sharing a mouth. A kind of intimacy. He presses down on the feeling, tries desperately to ignore it.

“No,” Credence says. “I’m sorry.” Mr. Graves can make light appear out of darkness. He can travel without moving. He is - he is _magical_ , the world baring its secrets to him. Credence has seen him stand like an idol in the rain, never touched by water. There’s no apology he can offer that will make up for his own uselessness, his yearning.

“Don’t apologize,” Mr. Graves says. “You are very intelligent, very perceptive.” He drinks the rest of his coffee. “I have faith in you.”

The words feel like sugar down his throat. They eat. Credence forces himself to slow down. He tries to hold in his mouth the same bites of food that Mr. Graves does, chew them at the same time.

When they are finished, Mr. Graves plucks a sad, wilted carnation from its turbid jar of water on the table. “The world is ruled by entropy,” he says. “The collapse and decay of all things is inevitable. But people like _us_ , Credence - we can fight back.” In his hands the flower becomes something else; resurrected from its former life, former self, it now looks to Credence like a jewel, a flower from a storybook that he’s forbidden to read. Black, with a bloodred stripe like a gash across it. “For you,” Mr. Graves says. He tucks the flower into the pocket of Credence’s threadbare jacket. “That suits you.”

Credence finds himself smiling, only a little. The feeling is foreign. It lasts all through the walk home, a pillar of warmth in the cold, and inside the church it is siphoned away until he is empty. Ma holds out her hands, for the belt, and he unbuckles and removes it from his trousers. Later he holds the flower, hidden and pressed flat in his pocket, in the slick blood of his palms. Like a prayer. _Resurrection,_ he thinks before he falls, finally, to sleep. _Resurrection._

 

*

 

Ma is giving one of her sermons. Credence sees Mr. Graves standing in the crowd, his black coat billowing, and slips quietly away. He has no news to give him, but he can’t bring himself to miss the feeling of gentle concern that washes over him in the presence of the other, the way Mr. Graves looks at Credence as though he _matters_.

“I have nothing to give you,” Credence murmurs, shaking, when they are alone, and Mr. Graves lays a hand to his cheek, as if to steady his thoughts.

He has never been touched so softly.

 

*

 

Mr. Graves meets him in an alley. “Anything?” he asks. Credence notes the faint lines around his eyes, has an impossible urge to take them away. Smooth them over with only a prayer.

“I’m sorry,” he says, desperate. “I am trying. I promise you I’m trying -”

“I believe you, Credence,” Mr. Graves says. “You don’t have to try so hard.”

Credence shuffles his feet, uncertain. Mr. Graves places a firm hand on his shoulder, leans in as if to tell him a secret. “My superior is impatient,” he confides to Credence. “He thinks this is an urgent matter, one that needs our close attention. I don’t disagree,” he continues, “but his fervor might be misplaced.”

“What do you mean?” Credence asks. He gathers these scraps of information to hoard like gold.

Mr. Graves shakes his head slowly. “It’s not important,” he says. He smoothes Credence’s hair and peers at him for a long while. Credence begins to feel dissected.

After a long bout of silence Mr. Graves says, “I brought you something.” From his pocket he pulls a small, delicate box and opens it. Inside is what looks to be a prettily carved bird out of glass. As Credence reaches for it, hand shaking, the bird flutters its wings. “It’s a sugarbird,” Mr. Graves explains as Credence stares in awe. “You’re meant to eat it.” He smiles faintly at Credence’s expression. “It’s not really alive. Just enchanted.”

The bird stretches and flies out of the box, encircling it daintily. Its movements are slow, its purpose easily discernible; it is not meant to fly away. It is a sweet thing whose sole purpose is to be devoured.

Credence reaches for it, closes his fist gently around the bird’s thrumming wings, feels the roughness of its feathers. Mr. Graves takes his hand and guides it toward his slowly parting mouth.

He _bites_ , scrapes sweetness with his teeth. Crunches so hard the bird’s sugar bones pierce the soft flesh of his palate, wings fluttering in his blood. It tastes like holding his heart inside his mouth.

 

*

 

“I’m sorry,” Credence says quietly, “I am so sorry, sir -”

“I came only to see you,” Mr. Graves says, and takes his hands, and heals them as though it is nothing, as though he is a saint.

 

*

 

It feels like a sin, to stuff his belly this full. Mr. Graves piles food high on his plate, orders him meal after meal. Roast chicken, potatoes, and he can barely stop himself from gorging like an animal. It is more food than he has ever seen in his entire life, more every time. He has nothing to give back, no knowledge, and yet he is being fed, being made comfortable. _Gluttony,_ he thinks. It has been years since he had more than a daily meal. _Gluttony and greed._

“Dessert?” Mr. Graves asks him.

“No - no thank you, sir,” he says.

“I insist,” Mr. Graves says. “The pineapple upside down cake is very good.”

He wonders at the urge Mr. Graves has to put things in his mouth. It’s a thought that fills him with shame, the way it spirals, and _untrue_ , too, no matter his urges, his secret wishes tucked away in the hollows of himself. Probably Mr. Graves has just seen that Credence is too thin, too ugly for his age. His thoughts are sharp against him, and he wonders, not for the first time, if Mr. Graves is truly as wicked as his Ma says all witches are. If his kindnesses are disguising something else. _Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour._

But Mr. Graves must be more than that. He could not be an adversary, not when he has shown Credence benevolence that he does not deserve, true mercy, which is _virtuous_. He has the face of an icon; he moves his hands over Credence’s flesh and it heals, moves his hands over water and it parts. He has god inside his fingertips.

When their cake comes, Mr. Graves picks up his fork, offers to feed Credence the first bite like he is a child. Trembling, Credence opens his mouth and accepts, a heretic; it is communion.

 

*

 

The next time Mr. Graves meets him he is distant, his eyes not so bright and watchful. He is still protective, still kind, but there is a new wariness to him. “Have you any news?” he asks Credence, and when Credence shakes his head there is no offer of food, no gift from a world that crosses Credence’s own, in bright and unfathomable places. He only caresses him brief as lightning, and then disappears into the air.

Credence tries not to feel bereft of Mr. Graves’ touch. It was never his to begin with.

 

*

 

They meet in dark and crooked places, until Credence thinks he is a dark and crooked place himself, a hollow thing eating the firmament, unholy and wretched. There are no more gifts. There is nothing to eat. Credence feels the roiling impatience buried beneath Mr. Graves’ calm demeanor. A lifetime of Ma and her punishments have imparted to him the necessity of reading people.

He wants more than anything to absolve himself, to give Mr. Graves the child he seeks. But there is nothing. Credence cannot find this special, _needed_ child, cannot bring himself to even want to - what use will Mr. Graves have for him, when he has fulfilled his only purpose? Will he still creep towards him in the dark, still extend his hand and heal the wounds on his palms with infinite softness, with grace? Or is he only a thing to be trod upon, a stepping stone on a path that has nothing to do with him?

No. Mr. Graves has promised him magic. Mr. Graves has promised him _miracles_. Credence feels weak for letting doubt wrack his body. Does doubt not lead to faithlessness? Is that not what has been beaten into his hands, his thighs, the shell of his back?

In the hollow of the church he peers carefully at the horde of children who descend like locusts for their gruel and soup, only water with a bit of onion, old vegetables barely kept. A sea of faces, all smeared with a patina of grime; all the half-carved bleakness of a grotesque in partial ruin. Ma smiles and smiles and grips tightly the hand of any child who would take their thin soup without first putting in their service to god. Credence keeps watch. He hands out food to the children and he hands out leaflets to strangers who look at him as though he his an insect. He catalogues every speck of strangeness, every misplaced glance or mark. He finds nothing, feels nothing except the creeping darkness of his own empty spaces, scratching at him to be let out. In the alley, palms bleeding, he can only beg Mr. Graves’ forgiveness.

 

*

 

In old stories Credence was not allowed to read, Percival was a gallant knight. Purer than the rest, close enough to holiness that he was able to see the grail itself. He had seemed so real to Credence, so shining off the pages of the books he’d hidden under his bed. The knight had tasted like sugar in Credence’s mouth; sweetness and light, a crystalline view of another world.

The memory is enmeshed with hard floors against Credence’s chest, him crouching under a niche to avoid detection, a single candle battling the encroaching dark. The slow, slightly pleasant pain of the wax dripping every so often onto the back of his left hand, his right holding open a book. Acutely aware of all noise, every stair creak that could be Ma coming to discover him, Credence would devour word after word, kept brightly like a box of treasure in his mind.

Percival the knight was raised in a forest, away from the temptation and the cruelty of the civilized world. He was so pure and good that he mistook the first knights he saw for angels; isolated from all else, his model for god was chivalry, virtue. The care of others. Percival the knight fought only against that which destroyed. Credence had loved him beyond all reason. Percival didn’t laugh at the wounded king, only healed him. A balm to the bleeding of the world.

Credence sometimes imagines that Mr. Graves is a knight.

With his wand and words. With his healing and his gentleness. In shades of black and blue and aging grey, Mr. Graves will come and make him safe, not again, never _again_ , but _first_ \- safe. What howls inside Credence is death beyond death, darkness beyond darkness, and he can’t bear it any longer, not for himself, not for anyone. He touches the necklace he’s been given, feels the thrum of magic underneath it strike a chord deep in his gut. Buried, smothered; a shining pearl in the wet of his intestines. His hands shake. He is coming apart. Mr. Graves will come and see him and heal him and help him.

“I’m done with you,” Mr. Graves says, instead, and it is worse than being hit by him.

 

*

 

He comes undone in black pieces. He can feel himself unraveling; glories in it. Black silk upon thorns upon silk upon thorns the cacophony the rush and so _good_ , to push into the confines of it all to tear down all weak and insignificant barriers slip through and expand in them consume all in his path the road the city the sky itself and what was stone to him now, when he was _god?_ What was the foundation of brick and sand when he was the devil himself, the bringer of destruction, the earth a world entire under the mouth of him? He rages and writhes and _sobs_ and the black rages with him, twines his grief around the monuments of steel and glass, screams his desperation in an aria of undoing. Of entropy, which is the law of the universe.

He thinks of hands healing his own, warmth, a flower crushed against his palms, matter from nothing. He howls and howls.

For Credence, there is no more comfort. Only shadow, only the dark of himself rising up and soaring like Cain, like every evil and ancient thing. Only Credence, seeking whom he may devour.

 

*

 

_Don’t listen to her, Credence. I want you to be free. It’s alright._

_I refuse to bow down any longer._

_I want you to be free. I refuse to bow down any longer. I want you to be free._

_I want you to be free._

 

*

 

Every part unraveled; nothing left unearthed. He is a stone who has been kicked, the insects knocked loose from their hiding places. Creeping, furtive, ugliness cringing when exposed to the light. “I’m possessed,” Credence sobs when he is found, half dead.

“You are not.” Mr. Graves takes his arm, curls his fingers around the bones of his wrist. “Credence. Listen to me. I promise you. You are not.”

“There’s a demon inside me.” Credence can feel it, writhing, burning, singing. Even now, so beautiful to him, its tendrils deep black and unfurling. A flower, a kiss. He cries like a child. “Is that why you did what you did?”

“I was confused,” Mr. Graves says, and pauses for a long time. “I was not myself,” he says carefully. “Credence, nothing that happened was your fault.” His grip tightens. “It was not right. It should not have been. You are the purest thing I have ever seen.”

“It’s _in_ me. A _monster_ -” he chokes, “leviathan, darkness upon the face of the deep.”

“No, Credence,” Mr. Graves tells him. “That’s only you.”

 

*

 

 _Stay there,_ Mr. Graves had commanded, so Credence had listened. Credence is very good at doing what he is told. He sits at Mr. Graves’ table and does not speak. The hollow of his skull has been filled with vines. They choke him at every turn. Everything is tenuous and vibrating. He runs his fingers over the light scuff marks on the wood.

Mr. Graves returns with something steaming in a cup. “Drink this,” he says, and Credence obeys. The liquid is repulsive, half-textured and tasteless, but he swallows it in one gulp and wipes his mouth and sets the cup unceremoniously on the table. It starts to drip condensation onto the wood. Mr. Graves stares at him. “Do you want,” he starts, then laughs near breathlessly. “Do you want some coffee, Credence?”

He nods. Mr. Graves disappears again. The thing inside him scratches to get out. He watches Mr. Graves set down two cups of coffee, a cup of milk. A bowl of sugar.

“What -” Credence asks, but he can’t finish. He has no idea how to put into words the depth of what he feels. The world blurs around him.

“Credence, listen to me,” Mr. Graves says. “The man - when you thought I told you -”

“No,” Credence says. “No no no no no no no -”

“It wasn’t me,” Mr. Graves says in a rush. “It was someone I trusted, wearing my face.”

Credence shakes. _My superior is impatient_. “Your superior. He...wore you?”

Mr. Graves laughs, short, hollow. “That he did,” he says.

“He hit me,” Credence says.

Mr. Graves moves his hand towards Credence’s own, stops halfway. “I know,” he says. “That was a mistake.”

“He hit me,” Credence says.

“I know.”

Credence looks at Mr. Graves, tries to see the differences between him and the idol who was so very false after all. He looks tired. He had always looked tired. The Mr. Graves who had promised him fame and glory among the magic of the world had never looked tired, only expectant, only triumphant. “Why did he,” Credence begins, voice shaking. He takes a breath. “Why did he -”

“Because of what you are,” Mr. Graves says. “Because of what you can do.” He looks profoundly morose but stares Credence in the eye. “He hoped to persuade you to his point of view.” He half smiles. “I think we can both agree that he vastly miscalculated,” he says.

Mr. Graves is not speaking of his other self as though he agrees with him. As though he even likes him. Hope withers in Credence as quickly as it flowers. Mr. Graves had let his impostor eat his own life. The side they are on is the same.

Credence licks his finger and sticks it in the bowl of sugar. Licks it again. He feels as though he could come apart once more at any moment.

“If I was not what I am,” Credence says, “you wouldn’t care about me.” It isn’t a question.

Mr. Graves stares at him for a long while. “If I was not what I am,” he says after a length, “then I would not be who I am. What we are defines us, Credence. More than anything else.”

“And what are we, then?” Credence asks. The word _we_ sits in his mouth like a rose.

“We are the moon,” Mr. Graves tells him. He looks less haunted, less miserable as he speaks. His eyes shine. “We are that which comes from under the hill. We are the ever dark, the light between the stars. The old and true magic. The last defenders of wonder in this ugly, pitiable world.”

Something curdles in his stomach, the hunger that he has been trained not to notice. “Wonder,” he says. _Giveth thee a sign of wonder. Let us go after other gods._ What might they look like, those other gods? What faces of rock, of stone, of water so deep in the earth it blackened the sky itself? He feels half-mad.

“You healed the king by asking what purpose the grail served,” Credence says. _Who does this law protect? Us or them?_ “Is that how...is that how you healed me? Or was it him?”

Mr. Graves stares. “What?” he asks.

“The grail,” Credence says, choking. Suffering makes him raw and desperate, close to begging in his attempts to have Mr. Graves understand. He can’t convey what he means - his mouth will not work properly. His bones feel like taffy.

“Settle,” Mr. Graves says, putting a hand on Credence’s shoulder.

“The grail,” Credence says again, shaking. “It’s - there’s something -”

“Credence, calm down, please,” Mr. Graves says. Is there fear in his voice? Is he afraid of what Credence might do?

The thought fills him with unexpected pleasure. He _should_ be afraid of Credence. He should be the cringing ugly thing that hides in the darkness and expects only to be touched when it hurts, when it's to _be_ hurt. “Why did you do it,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from crying. He hardly knows what he means.

“I believed I was right,” Mr. Graves says. He looks tired again, abruptly. “I believed I was righteous. Now I’m not so sure.” He reaches across the table and clasps Credence’s hand, firmly, with no hesitation. “I’m sorry,” he says, ferocious.

His touch makes something bloom under Credence’s skin. “I can feel it even now,” Credence says. “Inside me.” He moves his hand just slightly under Mr. Graves’ own, careful, so careful. “What am I?” he asks Mr. Graves.

“You’re a miracle,” he tells Credence, and kisses him, all teeth, all tongue, and Credence can taste the truth of it, like sugar down his throat. Like the blood in his mouth.

 


End file.
